October 2005

Thinking Globally...

Monday night, Jim Protzman, Mark Marcoplos, and I will present the following resolution to the Town Council. We plan to bring it subsequently to Carrboro and Orange County.

A Resolution Calling for New Federal Priorities

Chapel Hill Herald Candidate Forum - Carrboro

At Chapel Hill Town Hall.

DTH Endorses in Chapel Hill... and Carrboro

The DTH has announced its endorsements in the Chapel Hill Town Council Election. They are: Kevin Foy for Mayor, and Laurin Easthom, Mark Kleinschmidt, Will Raymond, and Bill Thorpe for Council.

You can read the endorsements here.

UPDATE: Carrboro endorsements announced.

UNC Campus Sustainability Day

Please come! Hundreds of students, staff, faculty, and administrators are expected to gather at Rams Head Plaza from 11:00-2:00 on Oct. 26 to celebrate the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Campus Sustainability Day.

The following is a press release that I am posting here at the request of Cindy Shea, UNC Sustainability Coordinator. She wanted to get the word out and invite the community to UNC Sustainability day, to be held next Wednesday (I've suggested she post this info on the UNC community webpage, too).

The basics:
What: Campus Sustainability Day
When: Wednesday, Oct. 26th
Where: Rams Head Plaza
Why: exhibits, information booths, and free local and organic food; the chance to meet and talk with those involved w/ campus sustainability efforts.

For more info, you can visit sustainability.unc.edu or call their office at 843-7284.

Campus Sustainability Day to feature awards, exhibits, food, report

What are the Really Free Market Signs made of?

Yesterday I was walking around Carrboro and Chapel Hill checking out the local candidates yards signs. Amongst all the political signs I noticed a sign not advertising a campaign. They were apparently home made signs letting us know about the Really Free Market, a "free event, where all are encouraged to give, receive, and create on their own terms."

I got closer to admire the hand cut spray paint stencil lettering, just as I would with a painting to determine its technique. Then I noticed behind the thinly painted white background was another sign. It was a school board candidate's yard sign repurposed! Knowing this I looked closer at more Really Free Market signs and noticed that other candidates yards signs had been altered this way too.

Local elections for dummies

[Editor's note: Alison is a new OrangePolitics volunteer who will be blogging about her journey to figure out the Carrboro races. We look forward to a new perspective on issues from someone who isn't already a politico or activist. -RS]

Someone once told me that the sign of a good government is one whose actions go mostly unnoticed by its people. I supposed he meant that if people could go along with their lives and not have to think about whether the city will suffer a blackout or the garbage will be picked up, things were running smoothly and the job was getting done.

I have lived in Carrboro for 7 years, and been a home owner for the last 3 years. According the definition above, Carrboro's government is a good one for me. I have hardly thought about it in all the time I have lived here. I have always known the Mayor and some of the Aldermen socially, but as for their political beliefs or platforms I have been completely ignorant. I plan to make a change this election season.

Race, ecology and campaigns

Chapel Hill Herald, Saturday October 22, 2005

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was a brief moment in which the long-neglected problem of environmental racism received some attention. Katrina exposed the racism in state and national efforts to aid victims, in who lives near Superfund sites, in who lives in the most vulnerable areas and in who has the means to evacuate.

It also laid bare the difficulty in disentangling questions of race and class particularly in a city like New Orleans. In the flooded Lower Ninth Ward, more than 98 percent of residents are black and more than a third live in poverty.

Katrina made manifest the nature of American poverty. Suddenly, we could see, as Duke professor Mark Anthony Neal put it, that the poor are "already dying a slow death, brought on by a concentration of financial limits, inferior housing, dilapidated educational structures, violence, environmental decay and systematic state neglect."

Chapel Hill Herald Candidate Forum - Chapel Hill

At Chapel Hill Town Hall.

Indy Endorsements!

The Independent Weekly endorsements, often thought to be the most influential in Orange County races, came out today.

In Chapel Hill the Indy endorses Kevin Foy for Mayor, and Mark Kleinschmidt, Laurin Easthom, Will Raymond, and Bill Thorpe for Council.

In Carrboro the Indy endorses Mark Chilton for Mayor, and Jacquie Gist, John Herrera, and Randee Haven-O'Donnell for Board of Aldermen.

For the School Board it endorses Lisa Stuckey, Pam Hemminger, and Jean Hamilton.

Peace vigil tonight at 6:30

Guest Post by Steve Sherman

There will be a vigil tonight at the Franklin St Post Office to commemorate the death of 2000 American military personnel. To end the ongoing bloodshed, American troops need to be withdrawn from Iraq. Let's not have to have a vigil for the 3,000th serviceperson fallen. Apologies for the MoveOn boilerplate:

2000 Too Many Have Died
Not One More Death. Not One More Dollar.
Join a Vigil to Remember the Fallen and the Living--Support the
Troops, Bring Them Home Now!

Wednesday, Oct. 26, 6:30pm
Franklin St. Post Office
(Please Bring Candles)

There will be over 400 events in 49 states.

We have just received word that the moment we have been dreading has arrived: 2,000 U.S. servicepeople have now died in Iraq. We grieve for these two thousand men and women, killed in the prime of their lives, for a war based on lies, and we grieve for the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have also died in the chaos and carnage the Bush Administration has brought to their country.

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